RLSebring

A lot of forum members have followed my plight in trying to get my Hot Cam crate motor to run properly. This has continued for the past 2 years. There have been many tuners get involved both in person and thru email. The problem was idle and low speed rolling. It had inherent drivability’s because of this.

Let me be clear that after talking with GMPP at length both prior and after the purchase I simply installed this into an application it was not meant for. Unfortunately I found this out after the fact and GMPP dropped me like a hot potato and would not support the install.

Of all the tuners involved, Ed Hutchins, edcmat-l1 here on the forum, is the only one that took the time involved to work out a tune that had the car idling much better than it ever has since the beginning. A lot of the tuners did things that were great above 1200 RPM’s but not many dealt with the idle issue. Not dissing any of them for what they were paid to do they did the money shot.

Mike Norris of Mike Norris Motorsports schooled me in the cam department and after months of back and forth discussions I mad e the decision of pulling the “HOT” cam out and ultimately decided to install an LS7 cam.

ENTER MOTORHEAD-47, AWARE02, TALLY HO and myself.

We performed the surgery on Saturday 2-12-2011. With their experience at installing a lot of Super Chargers among other mechanical abilities the process went not only smooth but fast. We pulled a hot car into the garage at 8am (I had a 2 hour drive to get there, and had to get the donuts) broke for lunch, did an oil change and repaired the dust covers on my steering rack and was finished with a running car shorty after 4pm.

Even though I had read up on a cam change I wasn’t really expecting all that was did to do this job. The attention to detail and concern to my car as well as Aware02’s car sitting less than 4 feet away was phenomenal. Every nut, bolt, screw and push pin went right back where it belonged and for probably the first time in my history there were no left over parts or fasteners.

I, we were a little nervous about this swap out as I was really after getting the car back to “stock”. Normal. The Hot cam would not crank well or idle at all on the stock LS3 factory tune. Edmat did some pretty cool stuff getting the car to idle with his tune and I was ready a couple of month ago to drive to Virginia to get the full tune treatment. It was only after deciding I didn’t want that many changes to the tune that I choose to just eliminate the problem at the source rather than a huge tune to compensate.

We weren’t a 100% sure this cam change was going to cure my problem. Well I have to tell you that I had a HUGE grin from ear to ear when we fired up the car and it ran beautiful with the bone stock tune reinstalled. No more dying at read lights, All the shifting ill’s seems to be cured as well. I took it through some paces last night and will be doing more today. I am anxious to hook up tuners again and see what some corrective tuning will do. With the hot cam I rarely would see modest results mostly extreme results certainly not in the right directions. I now have a correct base line to work from.

Again THANKS for those that helped. I’m so excited I think I’ll go and put a coat of wax on the car!




.

Tally Ho

Glad to be of assistance. Sorry I couldn't hang around until you fired it up. The tone in your post here is thanks enough for me and I'm glad your car is back to 100%. See you at Talladega if not sooner.

0Mike@NorrisMotorsports

Glad to hear it Robert as I think I have been talking to you about this for about 2 years now. I am guessing the 3 bolt LS7 cam I sent you worked fine with the current gear as it had to be a 3 bolt also.

Congrats to the guys helping you out also.

Mike Norris

RLSebring

Yes the cam worked perfect and looked great. The LS7 valve springs were substatually different, Karl and Ken both felt the rocker arm difference is why and also they were probably 25% beefier so we stayed with the stock LS3 valve springs and just went with the .7450 push rods instead of the stock pushrods. Was much difference in length so rather than try the stockers then having to pull them out we just went with the longer ones.

Car's running the best it ever has. I feel like I'm in a dream.

It's amazing what the guys will do when you show up with a dozen HOT krispy kremes...

Motorhead-47

"Will work for donuts"

AORoads

nice posts with humor and humility. I've heard/read many good things about Ed Hutchings and Mike Norris. Congrats to all on a job well done.

tomiboy

Great to hear!!

Ginny C6

I own stock in KK.
My cam swap is three weeks and counting Now, if ATI would just send me the correct balancer

RLSebring

Damn I just noticed our member join dates...

FUNTRUN

So what kind of HP/Torque figures are you expecting with the new LS7 cam?

pmj341

Glad to hear you finally fixed it
The group from Nicevile is well known for helping all Vette guy's and specially the serving Military
Donuts

RLSebring

Honestly the only expectations I had was for the car to run normal for which it never did with the Hot Cam in it. Had I had a manual I most likely would not have had many of the problems encountered.

It did force me to learn HP Tuners so now I can start with a fresh slate with the car running properly to go from.

Motorhead-47

....somewhere north of 436 and south of 480 flywheel

AWARE02

"GARAGE MAHAL" is now open 24/7. Glad you are happy with the cam swap! BTW.....no more donuts!

RLSebring

Thanks Ken for cleaning the exhaust tips. Several people including the wife mentioned "How much better they looked than dirty".

I guess I'll have to put that on the punch out list when cleaning the car now...

Did you re-index my windows? It dawned on me when I got home they went right up.

Motorhead-47

Like I said in an earlier post "Will work for donuts"...I'm standing my ground on this one....no more donuts...no more work!

....musta found donut crumbs on his purdy garage floor

Motorhead-47

Didn't touch the windows but I did clean the exhaust tips. Just a wee bit of carb cleaner on a rag did the trick. They'll be a lot easier to keep clean now without the lumpy cam/rich idle.

Ragtop 99

Nice story. Glad the outcome was good.

AWARE02

OK Ken, you win.....donuts are back on the must have menu. Btw how were the greasy donuts (new way to eat....get hands filthy greasy, then eat donuts!!!

RLSebring

I should have had some chocolate ones then we wouldn't have know about the new flavor Ken concocted.

I got the MAF dialed in today. What a pleasure it was to actually get, see and feel results for a change. On my MAF table when I log I am under 2% in all cells now.

Tomorrow I'll work on idle and final running air flow then on the knock/timing.

She's smooth as a baby's butt idling at 600 RPM's. I still haven't got it to stall at the redlight yet. I don't think it will.